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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So yet another nugget about HB is these kids are not even operating at the level of kids at the home high schools and college admission is probably easier for them as a result.

In the end, in theory people should want their kids well prepared for college but I'm sure plenty of people love that they're getting AP lang and lit on their transcript with an A and meanwhile doing nothing in class.[/quote]

Hold on tiger. who said they are doing nothing in class? and who said college admissions are easier? the kids at HB are less prepared for the AP exams and get lower scores. That hurts them with college admissions, not helps them

[/quote]

It sounds like they are not doing nearly as much as kids at the other schools in AP classes.

It 100 percent makes college admissions easier.  Kids are compared against their peers at their same school.  HB kids are taking easier classes that are labeled "most rigorous" for their school.   To recap, they are not working as hard and taking fewer challenging classes (since so many fewer are offered at HB to begin with) and then getting into the same schools as kids from the larger high schools.   Compare a UVA admit from HB to a UVA admit from W-L IB and the W-L IB kid is a far more impressive and higher achieving student.   You clearly don't know anything about the college admissions process.[/quote]

Right but AP scores are AP scores and these would be compared against the applicant pool more globally. It does not seem like a strong point that AP classes are not taught as well resulting in kids getting lower schools. But you seem to disagree and this that it is, so I probably won't be able to convince you otherwise.

[/quote]

Proof is in the pudding: HBW dominates college admissions

https://www.scribd.com/document/757378704/Where-Arlington-s-Class-of-2024-Applied-to-College-and-Got-In

Yorktown High School:
Top-20 accepts: ~36
Top-50 accepts: ~110
Estimated class size: ~600
Approx. rates: ~6% Top-20, ~18% Top-50

Washington-Liberty High School:
Top-20 accepts: ~34
Top-50 accepts: ~95
Estimated class size: ~550
Approx. rates: ~6% Top-20, ~17% Top-50

Wakefield High School:
Top-20 accepts: ~12
Top.-50 accepts: ~45
Estimated class size: ~480
Approx. rates: ~2.5% Top-20, ~9% Top-50

H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program:
Top-20 accepts: ~10
Top-50 accepts: ~30
Estimated class size: ~120
Approx. rates: ~8% Top-20, ~25% Top-50

Arlington Career Center / Arlington Tech:
Top-20 accepts: ~3
Top-50 accepts: ~12
Estimated class size: ~100
Approx. rates: ~3% Top-20, ~12% Top-50

Districtwide estimate (≈1,850 graduates):
Top-20 acceptances: ~95–100 (~5%)
Top-50 acceptances: ~290–300 (~16%)[/quote]

What year is this and where did you get the estimated class size? Did you pick out top 20 and top 50 manually from the chart or is there another source where it’s summarized? [/quote]

Agree, plus the class size is not a good denominator.  Numbers of applications would be a better one.  I calculated it for UVA and ….its exactly the same from all schools and programs.  Consistently ~ over 17%-19% from each, no matter where the kid went.  [/quote]

Counselors and peers at HBW push kids to take the shot at elite schools, whereas neighborhood schools counselors are focused on getting students to pass the SOL and graduate, not apply to elite schools. If you only count the kids who actually applied, you’re missing the invisible students who were guided away or never encouraged to apply to elite schools entirely. Class size is a much better measure of a school's overall ceiling.[/quote]

Well, HB doesn't even have counselors so try again. [/quote]

The teachers act as counselors, everyone knows that.  But in their ROLE as counselors, they are more likely to encourage elite schools since they spend most of their time involved in education, rather than discipline and administrative fire drills like at neighborhood schools.[/quote]

From experience, this is not an absolute truth. In fact we'd claim it skews heavily the other way. A lot of HB teachers, including the ones that we've had as "counselors" AKA TAs, meet each kid where the kid is, where the kid wants to be, or where the kid thinks they are. The more mature kids (and there obviously aren't that many) can take advantage of this--hence the few kids that get admitted to elite schools. However, one could argue (say, if they knew anything about the top kids from the past 5+ graduating classes) that many of those kids would have excelled at larger schools and would probably have done better over there given the increased resources and opportunities over there.

For us, there has been no real push from HB teachers to take harder classes nor is there any direct communication with parents with any concerns, except from one teacher who every kid takes and would say, "oh yeah that one's not surprising" given their background. Some of the teachers have been fantastic. However, even when they do care, I doubt that these TAs are sophisticated enough to research a kid's academics and ECs, and then match them up with elite colleges that are a best fit to apply to. They are not experienced college counselors with metadata from 1000s of internal alumni data points. The TAs can only look at Naviance and now SchooLinks (which is garbage) just like we do. As a parent, it's taken literally 100s of hours of research and college visits for us to get a sense of which colleges to shoot for and how the colleges select their applicants. The latter time and money expense/waste is because of the nonsense of holistic admissions at the top colleges.[/quote]

+1
If you want college counseling you won’t get it at HB. Hire a private coach or do your own research. [/quote]

Respectfully, all this tells me is that that student didn’t belong at HB in the first place. The school makes very clear that it is designed for self motivated and self directed students—not ones that need to be “pushed.”

And hundreds of hours to research colleges? Really?  We sent four kids to college, all of them to very good ones, and we didn’t spend hundreds of hours collectively between the four researching colleges.  It’s not that difficult.  I suggest you look inward instead of outward when evaluating your student’s experience at HB.

—Parent of 2 HB grads [/quote]

Thank you. I have one in HB and I'm asking them where do they want to go geographically. These next 4 are for fun and a very basic credential. Any good school will do. Also, I saw that 100 hours and was like...who? Me? No. No way. naaaa[/quote]

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